Increase Your Fitness to Boost Your Success as a Real Estate Agent w/ AJ Mida

Welcome to Real Estate Business Builders. I'm your host, Lars Hedenborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. Bottom line, the real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to financial freedom. Traditional brokerages and coaching are designed to keep you running on the transaction treadmill with no exit strategy. While I didn't have any sales, marketing, or business building experience when I got into real estate, I was willing to bet on myself and figure it out because my family was depending. Having served over 5,000 families with their real estate needs, I've made every mistake you could possibly make in this business. Through Real Estate B School, I've helped hundreds of agents and team leaders realize their goal of true time and money, freedom and living a life without regrets. If you know there's another level of growth inside of you and you want to learn how to build a highly lucrative lifestyle business, then you're in the right place. You won't find any fluff or hype here on this show. Just real world tools, systems and strategies that work. Let's grow together.

How do you dial in your health so that you can show up in the areas of life that matter? I did everything wrong with my physical health when I was, like, growing up in the real estate business. I guess I'll just speak for myself. I've lost easily over 200 pounds, easily maybe close to 250 pounds. And then people will be like, oh, gosh, like, that's amazing. Literally the same £25. So I, so my, my thing, I'm just figuring out in this journey and AJ I'm going to ask your, like, your overall sort of like, generally speaking, what you've learned. What I've learned is that they're the grand gestures don't work. You know, I can push hard for 90 days and I can burn like 30 pounds and get down to my skinny weight and fit in my skinny clothes and then I take the other, you know, 270 days of the year, you know, to gain it all back, which is, you know, totally undermining true health. But I figure some things out. Ages. Figured some things out. We both still struggle. We're going to bring that to you. So, A.J. just to start us off, like, talk about health, how does it fit into your journey in business and, you know, and being a father and a husband and kind of how do you view health in your. In your overall life?

Yeah, man, I'm excited for today's topic. You know, it's. It's like you. I've lost the same pounds several times over the year and, and man, you know, it's, it's interesting journey. I've definitely learned what, what works for me and what doesn't. But looking back now, you know, 10 plus years in, in the real estate industry and before that, being an entrepreneur, being in good shape is crucial to your success. Not only from just how you feel and how you show up to your work, but also like the perception of yourself to clients. I think when you're in great shape, people look at you different. They can see you taking your physical body serious. So that shows that you're going to take your, your career, your job more serious. And it's more maybe probably even subconscious than a conscious thought that they have. But I mean, if you're thinking about, you know, if you had someone that was pretty overweight coming to your house to, you know, apply for the job, to sell your home or to, you know, do some, I don't know, window replacement or maybe that's a bad example. But some, some kind of profession that you're looking to hire a doctor, you go in and they're overweight. It discredits their professionalism. You know, I was just listening to a Joe Rogan podcast yesterday and he was interviewing that, this guy that's really big on, you know, vaccines for the most part, and this guy's overweight, talking about how he doesn't eat healthy, he doesn't take vitamins, and right away it discredited his entire argument that he was trying to make on, on Joe's podcast. So for, for me it's been a non essential, however sometimes, or it's been essential for me to stay in shape, however sometimes. It definitely maybe didn't always show up that way. But right now I'm in great shape, looking to lose some more fat. But I've been on a good journey for like the last eight months now. Like extreme consistency.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a good point, you know, and it's, it's a little, you know, especially in like just the overall cancel culture, you know, to even bring up. I feel the same way like there, this was early on in my journey where I was, you know, I chose the, chose the building route and leverage and building a real estate team. And there was this guy in the same coaching program as me and he, he was, he just did not tend to his physical body like by hundreds of pounds. And I didn't, I don't feel good saying this and maybe this is more, more of me, me kind of bearing something that's not great about Me, but I, I couldn't take business advice from him. In the back of my mind, I, I would think to myself, like, you know what, look what he's sacrificing to be able to put more effort into his real estate business, right? So I want to align myself with and, you know, do life with folks that are like, let me draw blood, let me talk to your wife. Let me, you know, look at your bank accounts. Let me, you know, give me your Bible and let's see if it's been opened ever, you know. And so you have to get to a point where, you know, it's, it can't be one dimensional. Same thing goes with like a gym rat that is like totally like buff and dialed in, but the guy has no money, you know, four hours, you know, a day. So it goes both ways. But I, I, I, I feel you on that, that, you know, it's outside of my faith, the foundation, you know, and, and I just turned 50, so this is even more, I mean, AJ's like, what, did you just turn 29? What, what are you.

I'll be 37 in a couple months.

37? Oh, my Lord, man. When you hit 40, that's when, like, we're even. Yeah, over the hill. But now that I've hit 50, like, I have a really good friend of mine who's 58 or 59, he just retired, really successful guy. I know all of those things about him. I know his wife, I know his kids, I know his net worth and his cash flows. And so he's just, he's doing all the things he spends time every day with, with, with his creator. And I really respect him. But, but he seeing like him and he's in really good physical shape. He left me a message, as you did from, for my 50th, and, and he said, you know, the, the, the effort you put now at age 50, you know, into your physical body, like the next five years is going to set you up for the next 25 years. Right? So my goal at age 55 and even age 60 is to be in better shape every year until I'm 60 so that I can crush those next 10 or 20. You know, not crush, you know, grind sort of work type situation, but just be healthy and be able to enjoy life and adventures and, you know, do fun things and ride, be able to control those freaking snowmobiles in, in Jackson that we, that we did earlier this year, you know, when we're, when we're 60 and you're still be like 46 I guess he'll always be, you know, 13 years younger than me, but. So let's, let's get in. Let's start with mindset. So you and I are a little bit similar in, in that we kind of go through these, you know, I'll just give you the numbers. For me, I've been as much as recently 218. I should be, I don't carry a lot of muscle. I should be low 180s with the amount of muscle that I carry. So what is that? 18 and 18. So about 30 to 35 pounds overweight. Right? That's my, like, oh, man, I feel really fat. I'm not wanting to buy new clothes. Right. So. And then I, I push down. And I've done that many, many times. So there's some mindset issues around that. And, and you may have a similar story. But let's unpack the mindset. Why do you think maybe as it relates to busy real estate agents, why do people struggle with their physical bodies? You know, let's crack the James Clear. I'm a mega fan of the book Atomic Habits. So many good quotes that could relate to this. But I think it comes down to, you know, 80% of success in anything is about your mindset or your psychology. And you know, when it comes to health, everybody knows how to be healthy, but very few people do it. So unpack a little bit. You know what you've learned about the mindset of tending to your physical body. And it probably goes to real estate production. It goes to all of the things. But talk about mindset a little bit.

The first two thoughts that come to mind, and I'm like, you, I. My most recent highest weight was 239. Actually leaving the Jackson Hole trip because the food that we were being served at that remote cabin was off the charts delicious. All you can eat, basically. And I'm 227 today. And that was just a few months ago. I saw a big fluctuation. I think the biggest thing is like, what is your thermostat? If you read the book Secrets of the Millionaire Mine, great book. T Harv Eker talks about the financial thermostat. So this can apply to your business or your weight. Like, where are you comfortable? Like when I get north of 2:30, like my, my furnace kicks on. Like, it's like it's too cold in here, so the furnace kicks on. That's where I'm very uncomfortable above 230. But when I get down to 215. 220 I start feeling comfortable again. And it's like anything below that, I'm. I'm getting, like, out of my comfort zone in. In the. In in a positive way, getting in great shape. But because my thermostat isn't reset to cause me to go below really 215, I usually plateau right there when my goal weight's really 200. It's like with sales, if you're used to making $50,000 a year and then you get into real estate and now you're making 80, there's a good chance that your financial thermostat is going to say, hey, you don't need to work any harder. You can coast now. And then your income is going to fall back to the level of where you're comfortable. So the mindset always needs to be, how do I raise that financial thermostat or that health thermostat? And what I've discovered both in business and health, the way you do that is by getting around the right people, doing, getting accountability, maybe through a paid coach or just a group. So with business, my financial thermostat I discovered as a real estate agent early on was like mid six figures. Then it took some work to push it up to $200,000 a year. And now, to be quite honest, if I was making less than a million dollars a year, I would feel very uncomfortable because that's below the temperature that I'm comfortable at. And who knows, maybe if I can get to $5 million a year, which would be awesome, maybe I'll just coast, because that's that new number for me. But to be honest, right where I am right now is kind of that coast financially for me, and it's a decision I made. But with health, it's the same thing. So now I have a fitness coach, somebody that I meet with on a weekly basis to track my macros. And me and Lars are both on this macro plan right now, which we can talk about in a little more detail. Maybe it can help you. And then also getting yourself around with people who are also on that same journey. And I find it's hard to find people who are in really great shape who will challenge you in those areas, because most people are just busy with their families, busy with their work. And the easiest and thing that's quite frankly, the fastest to let go is your health. It ends up being the lowest priority, even though it should be the highest, because it drives your business, it gives you the energy to invest back in your family and relationships. So if you're Just kind of like, man, I need to do something today. I need to change what I'm doing. You can just start with a simple online accountability platform. I used a company called Stronger you in the past. It's a macro accountability program. My wife's doing that right now. I'm doing a different one. But Stronger you is. It's like 160 bucks a month, pretty cheap. A personal trainer. I have a personal trainer that I work out with twice a week. I. I don't do four times a week. Even though I work out four times a week. I do twice a week because it allows me to save a little bit of cost. And I also like listening to podcasts sometimes when I work out. So it gives me some of that time back to do that. But it allows me at least to stay in the game. Because if I show up with my trainer every week, even once a week would be fine. Because the other off days were where I'm not seeing him. I'm still going to work out. I'm still going to eat decent. Because if I show up a week later and I. And I haven't done my workouts, I ate like a slob. It's going to show not only in the way I carry myself and communicate, because I'm going to be disappointed in myself and embarrassed, but it's just that, true accountability. So I've stacked layers of accountability by having someone that sees me at the gym on a regular basis and also someone that's actually looking at my macros on a weekly basis. And I found that to work really well for me. Cause it can be hard to find people at a local level. So I think engaging in paid services or programs really helps.

Awesome. And what was the name? It's funny you say that. The Thermostat. I've heard that term before, but I've never really internalized it or used it. But it's 100% true with me and my weight. You know, when I hit the mid-190s to 192, I'm like, well, my marriage weight was 192. It's good enough. But I know I still have 10, 15 pounds of fat on me. And I know at my age this fat is around my belly, it directly correlates with heart attack. What was the name of that book again by Harvey?

Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.

Secrets of a Millionaire Mind. Right. So that's really, really good when I think about mindset as it relates to your physical body. And again, we're talking about this topic on Sort of a business lifestyle finance show here, which is what we want this show to be because this is the thing that fuels everything. It finally made sense to me. So my personality is like grand gestures, right? So I'm gonna. In the book Atomic Habits, James Clear literally calls this out. He says, you know, don't become, don't run a marathon. Become a runner, right? So, so I literally ran a marathon. Like my goal was to, I never ran before ever. And the first thing I do is sign up for a marathon. And it was like D.C. marine Corps Marathon. It was awesome. Lifetime experience. I did get an accountability partner. I followed a strict program, right? A 90 day program. And I could have, I didn't break four hours, but I, I could have. I did it in 419. And so, you know, the, the identifying, like you, you will do the things that are in. How do I want to say it? Like, you'll act the way that, that you identify, right? So if, if you, you know, if you're kind of like, don't take care of your health and you don't, you're not put together very well, like you, you don't identify as like, if you decided today I'm gonna identify as, you know, an athlete, you know, and, and having that approach in my life, like athletes, you know, hydrate, they get good sleep. They, you know, versus like just you know, pushing through and, and like I gotta work out today. It's like, no, I'm an athlete. You know, we're, we're corporate athletes, right? Not corporate athletes, but we're, you know, business athletes. We have the ability to make seven figures in real estate and, and more than that, multiple seven figures in, you know, the opportunity that we have in, in rev share with exp. And we need to treat our physical bodies that way, you know, and oftentimes we just, we don't embody that mindset. So if you're lacking in, in any area of your life, you know, you're, you're not identifying like, what would a world class husband do? Like, what would a world class father do? What would a world class athlete do? What would a world class real estate agent do? You know, they would dress the part. They would, you know, be early to appointments. Like it's really easy when you identify as that thing. So let's, let's get tactical. You, you mentioned some of the more tactical things that, that you've done. Like I've got some workout equipment in my home that I love and I want to talk about. I've got some apps that I use, that I love. But I'm going to have you start out like any books or apps or things that you like, you recommend after, you know, you're. Yeah, you've been focusing on this for a while in the roller coaster. What would you recommend in terms of like really tactical things? Yeah.

So I have an app that I'll share in a second and, and I'm a lot like you with the grand gestures. Grand gestures. So what I, what I would, what I used to do is like, like I'm going vegan for, for a year or six months and. Yeah, exactly. And by going vegan it was like, okay, it worked for me. I felt great because what do I love? I love pizza, I love ice cream, I love brownies. And all those things have dairy, which is not vegan. And then the industry got really smart and now they have amazing dairy free ice cream, decent dairy free pizza, like amazing dairy free brownies. So there's all these dairy free treats now that are vegan that I can eat even if I am vegan. So then that screwed me up because then I would cheat like that. And, and what I discovered works for me is like having some accountability in place, being able to still eat things that I enjoy, but tracking it using macros. Macros are like fat, carbs and protein. Alcohol is considered a macro too. But for the sake of this conversation, those are your three macros. So like yesterday, for example, it was Father's Day Sunday. Yesterday was obviously Monday because today's Tuesday, but my wife got Ben and Jerry's on Saturday a little quart or pint for us to share. I didn't eat it Sunday because I didn't have any room in my macros even though it was part of my Father's Day gift. I ate it last night because I was disciplined enough to save those macros for that ice cream. So I can still have those treats that I desire. But it's all part of the plan. So that really has been helpful for me. And then the app that I recently started using to track my workouts is, it's a free app and I love it. It's called Heavy H E V Y. And what's cool about that is, is there's already workouts in there and you can just choose the workout. So there it's pre populated and that would make it really easy if you don't really know what you want to do. But if there's a workout that maybe someone else programmed for you or one that you like to do yourself, you can add that workout. And what I like about it is you hit start when you go to start your work workout, it tracks how long your workout is, so you know how long it took you each time. But it shows you your history of weights that you've used. So over time you can actually see yourself in that app getting stronger. So it's tracking your weight, it's going to track how many reps you're doing. And then with my fitness coach, she has me at the end of the week actually uploading that to a spreadsheet. So I can clearly see it on a spreadsheet, it progressing over time, which has been really great. And that's what I recommend, some kind of tracking device, whether it be an app or just a notebook. But track your workouts, are you getting stronger? Track your nutrition, are you actually getting better in terms of diet then? Also, I never looked at it this way, but this fitness coach has me tracking my average weekly weight. So in the spreadsheet I put my weight every day and then it does a seven day average because weight can vary day to day. So it's is my 7 day weight average improving. So I thought that was a really cool metric and it's really encouraging. I'm measuring my waist every Monday. That's cool. You know, so it's like some tangible results, even incremental, but you can see that it's moving because if I looked in the mirror right now from two months ago, I, I, I wouldn't see the progress I'm seeing on paper or, or with the, the measuring tape that I'm using for my waist. Like I went down a half inch over like the last couple of weeks on my waist and I can't tell in the picture. So just seeing these different little markers improving, man, that, that fires you up, that gets you excited. So when you're in that lull and you're in it for three months, six months, and, and maybe you don't see the improvements you had hoped. And because fitness is a long journey, seeing the incremental improvements in these different little metrics that you're tracking, for me, it's extremely motivating. So that's kind of what I'm doing right now. I mean that's everything right there.

I was going to say I'm going to sound like a real nerd as I say this, but I only know it from B school. So there's this British mathematician, Carl Pearson and this was like the 1800s. There's some like law around this. You know what you Measure improves and what you measure and essentially share with others, you know, improves exponentially. Right. So the accountability with, with tracking. Right. So there's, there's really, there's not an easy way, you know, so I, I'm the ultimate tracker. I, I, I told Julie I did a 30 day sabbatical recently. We talked about freedom in real estate on our last show. But I told her, I said my biggest dilemma is like, you know, do I stick with the whoop, the aura? Like I started wearing my Apple watch again and at one point I had three trackers, right. And I think I found a system that works for me. But you know, in this like the things you'll need to be successful over the long run, like, I don't think I'm lying to myself when I say this, but I feel the most confident that I've ever felt about, maybe it's because I hit 50 and I'm like, I want to just finish this life, you know, fit my physical life here on earth, really, really strong and I'm, I'm finally motivated enough and I feel, feel some certainty around it. But it's going to come with just, just the, the, the things you do every day, you know. So now I will likely my intention is to log everything I eat forever, right? Just to track my macros forever. And once you use an app, I don't love MyFitnessPal, but I know that's the most widely used one. I started using Lose it, which it just has these really cool charts and it's so easy to use and you can use it for intermittent fasting. If you do that, you can put your weight in there, your log, your water in there. It tracks all your workouts from your Apple Watch. It gives you credit for those workouts. So on days where I really crushed my workouts, I did cardio for 60 minutes today because I think we're going to have a dinner that I want to eat a little bit more, you know, so you can get, game the system a little bit and still stay within your macros, but just tracking the macros, you know, and you, you'll get keenly aware like if you're, if you're trying to cut on the carbs because you want to shred some fat, you'll be aware that like a gluten free wrap around, you know, a tortilla wrap or whatever has like 30 grams of carbs and you'll be like, I'll just put the salad in a bowl, you know, because I, I want to save that maybe for something else or, or whatever. So having some sort of app. I use an app called along the lines of Atomic Habits and just you know, the, the little what, like I don't know if it's called a dopamine hit when you, when you accomplish something that you want to do on the daily. I use an app and there's lots of these different apps. I've tested a lot of them. I use an app called Strides where I track. Did I drink a healthy shake? Did I eat a big green salad today? Did I drink 100 ounces of water? Did I hit my macro targets? Did I take my vitamins? Did I log all my meals? No eating after 7pm Did I sleep seven and a half hours? Did I do my full workout which is weights plus cardio and then did I do the infrared sauna? Did I weigh myself? Did I do a 12 hour fast? So there's a lot, there's a lot that I track maybe 12 things, but it just takes like, it takes no time. And then over time I could just see if, if I'm not getting the results I want, you know, I'd be lying to myself. Like I've got all the data, you know. So that's another thing, just practically that, that I use and then to one piece of equipment in my home that I will never give up. I don't love going to the gym, but it's a little bit on the more expensive side. I think it's like 3, 500 for tonal T O N A L and they have like it's a subscription. Everything is a subscription model these days. These businesses that blow up into multi billion dollar businesses. But I literally have access to like, it's essentially like what's the company that. It's like Bowflex, like an electronic Bowflex that has like every 200 plus exercises in it with all the coaches that will take you through. Like you just sign up for these different programs. I literally just go there, hit play and it's going to make me do the work. It gets me warmed up. I live for 30 minutes in ways that I never would on my own, like doing a plank and like pulling the rope and you know, doing these like these things with weight and you know, all the things that you know, I need. It builds my physique and, and builds muscle and flexibility in a way that as I'm aging I want to be able to, you know, to kind of do all these things. So my tonal and then I just jump on peloton and I'll watch YouTube. It's my One Vice, the one app I did not delete from my phone, which I probably should. But now I have a rule where if I'm gonna watch YouTube, it's either going to be walking at an 8% incline at 3.5 miles per hour. I can do about 120 beats a minute. So I can get my cardio, my low, low heart rate, cardio, whatever the fat burn cardio is 45 minutes plus. And then I'll get in the infrared sauna, which burns like, I think like 400 calories an hour or even, even more. It's like 6, 700 calories an hour, which is good for detox and all that. So I can, I can get about an hour and 15 minutes of YouTube in, but only if I'm on the treadmill and only if I'm in an infrared sauna. So those are just a few of the things I think you just need to have it like easily available. So AJ has an un, I don't want to say unreasonable, and that's not the word, an unreasonable lifestyle, you know, to be his age and to have the financial box checked and the time box checked and to live in paradise and have a lot of busy agents. Like if you hired a personal trainer and you have to physically, physically go to a gym and that could almost be an excuse why you wouldn't do it, right? Like I don't have time to drive 15 minutes to the gym or, you know, so bringing equipment into your home, you know, and cutting out an hour of Netflix at night, getting up an hour early and getting the workout in, you know, and tracking your sleep and doing those kinds of things highly, highly recommend you. And we both said it, you know, grand gestures will not win in the area of health, right? You'll, you'll grand gesture your way to close enough, you know, to your, to the weight where you don't feel completely fat. And then you'll spend the rest of the year getting fat. Then you'll come down in the first quarter of the year and then by Christmas you're fat again. That's what I did like every, I can show you on my weight apple. You know, it's, it's, it's horrific.

So, yeah.

Any thoughts around that?

No more back to yo yoing. I, I, I had, I had a question, a couple questions for you. Then I want to talk about wearables since, since you brought that up and, and hear what's working best for you right now. Because it sounds like you Maybe got a good system down for that. But you, you said because. Because I always wondered about this and, And I'm doing the opposite of you when it comes to. Because my fitness pal is what I'm using. And it also will credit your workouts and allow you to eat more. And if you, if, if you go for that run or whatever, I always turn that feature off so I don't allow myself to eat more. It's always the same. Was that just a personal decision or do you have a nutrition coach or, or someone? I, I actually do this thing.

I, I actually don't like there, There are days where I have net zero. Like, I, I literally have, have, like, you know, I just didn't eat a lot that day, which is not good. You're supposed to eat, eat like you're supposed to eat what you're supposed to eat. My daily is like 17 or 1800 calories with the macros I have set out. But if I eat light that day and I just skip a meal and it's not a good thing, but I only consume about a thousand calories and I get 1100 calories of workout, I won't use it to overeat. I'll just see. Man, I literally did negative today. I literally, like, as if today didn't happen from a caloric intake, like, I ate nothing.

Yeah.

So I, I never, I never like to go above the actual eating. So mine is like 1700. I ate 1690. Negative 700 on the workout and then a negative 710 for the. Or whatever. 710 surplus for the day. I always want my workouts to be the surplus plus a little bit under eating.

Okay.

But I just like seeing the numbers, you know, and it tracks weekly basis.

Yeah, I liked it too. And I actually stopped my apple Watch from going to my fitness pal because it would, it would show that I could eat more. And it was kind of confusing me. And I was like, man, you know, I wonder if I can really more because I did that workout because, because my fitness. I don't think people tell you, yeah, I don't think you can either, but my fitness pal will make it look like you can. So you're sabotaging yourself. So then the other thing, you know, you mentioned the whoop, which, which I have the whoop. I have the aura. I have the Apple Watch, and, and I've, you know, been hot on one of the devices for a while and, and cold on it and, And I'm kind of, you know, I just went to a more traditional watch. I'M like, okay, I'm done with. With wearables right now, and I think I'm gonna just stick to a nice watch. And my aura tracks sleep. And I was, for me, got to where the whoop with tracking. Like, whoop. If you guys don't know, it's a. It's a wearable device. It's a band, and it helps track your sleep. It tracks like your recovery attracts, like resting heart, heart rate, all these different metrics.

For.

For me, it just became a lot of. A lot of data that I found interesting, but I didn't find it causing me to maybe change the way I behaved. So. So it kind of got a little useless to me, I guess, other than the sleep tracker, because that I think is gold. So that's. That's where I'm at with. With wearables. And I have my Apple watch. I'm supposed to be tracking my steps per my coach, but I forget to charge it half the time, so. So that's not going great. And I hate notifications on my wrist, so I just use it as an expensive step tracker, which. Which isn't, you know, the best step tracker, I'm sure, at whatever they cost, $400. But. But what's working for you right now? You got your aura on, you got your Apple watch. You don't have the whoop. So, yeah.

Yeah, so I'm. I'm. I went when Tony Robbins came and first spoke at. What was it? Two. Two build events ago, I think.

Yes. So 2021.

And I saw the whoop. You know, I saw he was wearing the whoop, and that's what kind of turned me on to the whoop to begin with. I'm like, I'm. I'm literally doing his, you know, fountain life, you know, executive kind of health coaching program, which has been awesome. I could talk about it briefly. Probably not for everybody, but yeah. So when I saw that, I'm like, well, Tony does it. You know, I. I should probably get it. And I was happy with the oryx. So the thing I like about the aura is it's my wedding ring. Like, so my wife is totally cool with this, you know, being my only ring. If when I was doing the whoop and no aura ring, I would just wore this little, like, rubbery, you know, very cheap groove. Life was the company that I would just. I'd order different color wedding rings and like, it was a whole. A whole stupid thing. But I. I don't like having. I don't like sleeping with. I don't like, having stuff around my wrist. So, you know, I just charge my Apple watch at night, you know, charger. I wear the aura, you know, so this does all the things. I like the reporting in Whoop better, but I don't do anything with it. Right. So this does readiness, and it does all this stuff. Temperature tracks your. It tracks your workouts, but not as good as the Apple watch. So when I'm lifting, I'll just take the aura off, and I'm just, you know, I'm tracking the workout on my Apple watch. So right now, it's just aura, an Apple watch. And I'm. I'm pretty happy about it. Like, you know, this is a very lightweight watch ring. You know, it's no bigger than. If you're on the YouTube, it's no bigger than a wedding ring. The first version of this, that. What they had was bulky. This is the third gen. The first gen was like, you were wearing, like, a big. Like a big piece of equipment on top.

Of. Yeah.

And I think everybody needs to track their sleep. I mean, if you do any research on sleep, there's nothing better for your body. I mean, hydration and sleep and obviously the fuel you put in your body and working out, there's kind of four pillars to health, but your body just repairs itself. Your brain gets rid of all the gunk at night when you're in the different modes of sleep. And this does track your deep sleep, your rem, your light sleep, if you wake up at night. I. When I got close to 50, I had to pee 1 million times a day, you know, so that was getting in the way of my sleep. And I would. You know, I would. I would see all my sleep, the rhythms break up because I had, like, old man, you know, pee. I've got it under control now. I'm on a med, and it made it all go away, which is pretty cool. I don't like medications, but I hate peeing 1 million times a day. Probably a little bit TMI there, but that's one of the realities, A.J. you might have that to look forward to. My buddy, who's a few years older than me, shares this. So you're. You've got these exciting, exciting adventures ahead of you. Any parting thoughts? You know, if there's an agent out there that's, you know, they're. They're struggling in business. It's just a challenging market. As we're recording this, you know, there's. There's a. A lot of agents getting out of the business. So the agents that are in the business are stressed. Even the, the top agents are doing less production. They've got that going on. They probably see health like I did as a. Wouldn't it be nice to, like, yeah, wouldn't it be nice to be AJ and be in Puerto Rico and you know, work out with a personal trainer? Like, look at Lars, like, great, you're 50 and you have the means to do whatever. But what advice would you give for an agent that wants to kick ass in business? Maybe they're, they're not. And you know, we know that I would do things differently if I could go back in time and I could tell my 35 year old, 34 year old Lars when I first got in the business. Like, dude, get the workouts in, you know, get the sleep in, hydrate, don't eat the crappy food. Like, what advice would you give to agents right now that are, maybe this isn't a high priority for them?

Yeah, I mean the first step is just deciding you're going to do it. So if it's, if it's not a high priority, I think you need to look, look at why it's not and, and really, really evaluate that and you know, play some mind tricks to get convicted of why you should do it. Because you know, that's, that's the reality. You're going to make more money, you're going to have a better life, you're going to be a better dad, better spouse. If you're in good shape, you know, you're going to be on the earth longer and you're gonna have better energy and that's going to lead to a better, you know, positive mental attitude. You know, go for a walk right after this, listening to this, or maybe you're doing it while you're listening to this. Hopefully you are like you feel better right now or when you do that, like, it's great for your mental health. So, so I would just look at that and decide what you want to do. And if, if you are working like crazy, you know, like I, I started doing this when I was in real estate. For me, there's a group and you get, if you're in the Southeast, there's probably a group called F3Nation. If you're a male. I know Lars was in it for a while. I was in it for a while. Since we're Faith Family Fitness, it's a free workout group and they also have one fia. I'm not FIA is Females in Action. It's like a sub group of F3 and F3 is like everywhere. I think it's probably nationwide now. It's at 5:30 in the morning. It's a group of guys getting outside, working out together. That allowed me to get up at 4:50, I'd be at the field to work out. At 5:30 I'd go back and shower, read, get ready for my day. I'd be on my way to the office by like 7:45, get out the office at 8, I'd start my prospecting. That was great for me. Then it got to the point where it's like, you know what, that's pretty early to get up. I'm not sure if I want to do that for the next five years. So then I was like, you know what, I'm going to sign up for CrossFit because they're classes. So there's actually a time of when I need to be there. It's not just, oh, I'll get there when I have time. Because if you're going to get there when you, you have time, you're never going to consistently have time, which means you're going to be inconsistent with your workouts. So actually going to CrossFit or at my lunch to do a class worked really good for me. So I broke down my working day in two parts. The morning was for prospecting lunch. I would go have my workout, I would shower there or run home and shower, then go back to the office. And the afternoon was for preparing for appointments and appointments. So that worked out really good for me. So that's, that's what I would do. You got to do it. If I could say one thing about how to avoid the yo yo because you and I both admitted that we, we yo yoed for many years and this is the last time we're not, we're done with yo yoing. And I'm sure most people listening to this have yo yoed as well is putting in layers of accountability, layers of tracking. So for me it's, it's now a personal trainer and my, my fitness macro coach that's really helped me. So if I could go back in time, even though if, if it would have been a stretch to afford it, I would have got maybe a personal trainer, probably a meal prep service like Icon Meals would have helped me stay on my macros or the CrossFit gym did work for me. That's like kind of having a personal trainer. So just be thinking, who am I surrounding myself with? What kind of accountability do I have around it? Because if you're going to try to do it on your own. That's where the yo yoing starts.

Yeah, it's really good. And, and you know, also for real estate agents, I mean, but Both A, an F3 or a CrossFit or even like a YMCA or an orange Theory or like where you actually have to go. You're investing some money, but it's leveraged because it's group training. So it's not like it's not crazy expensive. I mean, these are less than 200amonth where you could be working out three, four times a week and doing the right work. But they're all community based, you know, so I mean, whatever that looks like for you, just get into a rhythm even. We have a lifetime fitness here, which is like a beautiful gym and as part of the. It's like $189 a month. So it's an expensive gym membership, but you get free access to like most of their classes are free. You can get yoga, you can get like body and weight, work off the tread, you know, lifting weights and do the hiit workouts. Like just got to get into some sort of groove and just mentally just make it a non negotiable. That's what I would probably tell myself because I was not like overly into fitness and taking care of my physical body. But now I realize that at age 50, I mean the way that I'm dialed in on hydration, you know, getting. My goal is 100 ounces, you know, my, my health coach tells me at least 60 of clear liquid water in addition to all the other, you know, hydration. I take in, you know, seven and a half hours of sleep, you know, staying on macro and all the obvious junk. No more than really 20 grams of, of added sugars a day. Tracking that as well and then working out, you know, cardio in addition to, to, to weights. I, I was at Fountain Life and I shared this with AJ and John and the, the main doctor there was not there. So one of the founders was filling in and I, it was like an awkwardly long conversation. Like I'm like, you surely have something better to do than talk to me about like the history of fountain life and like how like the, the vision and all of that. But it was a really cool conversation. Last thing he said, almost like wasn't even in the core conversation. Like I'm like, oh man, it was nice. I took a selfie and nobody would know this guy, but I thought it was cool. And he said, you know, lift weights four times a week, like build muscle mass. That's like the Number one determinant of longevity, like healthy years, is just putting on muscle mass. And it's almost like he was leaving. He's like, oh, by the way, the only thing that matters you, like, 80% of the body battle is, you know, And I had never heard someone with that conviction. Obviously, we know that's important, but I thought that was pretty cool. So it's not very complicated, you know, get. Get your. Make it easy to do the like. I look forward to my walking 8% at 3.5, so I can watch YouTube, like, in a day. I follow enough people where there's enough to watch, you know, and then I could go in the infrared sauna, and that's healthy, and I can watch some more. And I've organized my schedule to be able to do that. And one more thing, actually, before we go. We've got. We've got a few minutes here. Let's talk about necessary endings. So for some people listening, they're like, I couldn't possibly contemplate adding stuff into my calendar, right? Where would you guys get the time? I've got a wife, I've got the kids. I'm trying to do real estate. I'll start it off. Since there probably are some things that need to stop. You know, if you're being honest with yourself and you have goals, you're only tuning in to us rant about random things. If you have goals for your lifestyle, financial goals, and you want freedoms in your life, there will be some things that need to end, some relationships that probably need to end. You may be, you know, the people you surround yourself with are the guys. You do poker night on Tuesday, and you're cigars and bourbon or, you know, and you're drinking on, you know, Fridays and Saturdays and then all day Sunday watching football. In and of themselves, there's nothing wrong with things like that. You have to be able to. To attach, you know, a good feeling around ending some of those things, because the future will be. Your goals are going to be achievable by letting some of those things go. Letting some of those things go. AJ Any comments around, like, ending some things and replacing them? Like, the process of doing that?

I think you nailed it. It. That's one of the things that I think about a lot. I listen to podcasts probably two years ago now, and what hit me like a ton of bricks, I just never really considered that much, or at least not at a conscious level, was like, anytime you say yes to something, you have to say no to something else. And. And you should Consciously be aware of what you're going to say no to so that you can do that new thing. Whereas more, most people just add, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then they're at a place in life where they're just miserable because they said yes to all these activities, all these things. So, yeah, I would just look at what can you cut out and what's crazy too. And like this new fitness coach I'm in, like, this guy is like in shape. I found him on YouTube. Cool dude. I liked him sign up for his program. The people in it are getting amazing results, like, cut up. And it's four workouts a week lifting weights. And you're supposed to do like 10,000 steps on like every day. I probably only, you're supposed to get like 8, 8 to 10,000 steps. But anyways, they're like great results. He's in great shape. And I was like, I, I messaged a couple times, like my coach and then him, the founder of the program, I was like, are you sure? Like, like, when do I get to like the five days a week or the six days a week awaits? And they're like, all you need to do is four. And each workout is either between 30 minutes to 50 minutes. Like, that's the range depending on what workout it is for that day. Like, we're talking drive time, everything. Probably four hours a week of like really good weight training and then being more deliberate about how many steps you're getting per day just so you're, you're active throughout your day. Like, you're gonna get great results. So, so time can't even really be an excuse. And if, when you think about it, this, this fitness journey that you may choose to take on is like the, the hack to more success. So if you were to take away four hours from your work week, put it towards fitness, you're probably gonna end up making more money anyways because you got more energy, you got better focus, you're happier. So now you're attracting more business to you because people wanna work with you. You, you look great. So therefore you're confident that confidence is going to attract. It's just like, there's so many benefits, but, but just like, yeah, what are you going to cut out if, if you have to cut out, you probably don't even have to cut out, you know, or stack activities. Like, I love that hack that Lars said, like, stack your YouTube. I, I, I, I watch way too much YouTube. I'll grow good YouTube though. Personal development and stuff and, and all that kind of stuff. But, but I'm listening to it when I'm walking, then I'll be listening to it when I'm sitting as well. So I, I'm gonna take the, the hack and just take away the sitting of watching YouTube and only walk with it. But, but stack activity, I think that's great. Give yourself a reward while you're doing the activity. It's fun, man. I, I know that I'm a happier person when I'm pursuing my fitness journey. If I'm sitting on the couch getting lazy and fat again, that hurts my mental health. That, that makes me get into a rut, that makes me not as happy. It makes me less patient with my wife and kids, you know, so there's just, there's just so much good that comes from it. You just got to get to the point where it becomes non negotiable.

Yeah, last, last thought here. You know, when I think about necessary endings there. This was just recently, probably, I don't know, maybe nine months or a year ago. It was a Sunday night. So I'm, I'm a high achiever, right? I've got all these goals in all the areas. I break my life down into 12 areas. So each of my kids have their own area, my wife has their own area. My sibling and my mom have like. So I'm, I'm really getting after it, you know. But I noticed I wasn't getting enough sleep and I had kind of gotten into the 24. 7 news cycle, which I had been out of forever. And I literally could pinpoint it to one activity. We had a TV in our bedroom. Me and my wife would get in the bed, you know, around 9:30, we'd have three programs recorded from that night. We'd watch essentially all three in about 90 minutes, but watching about 90 minutes a night in the 24 hour news cycle and getting to bed about 60 to 75 minutes too late. So this was a Sunday night. It was like almost 9 o'. Clock. It's almost bedtime. So we're getting ready to pile into the bed and do our nightly routine that has us sleep late and serves nothing because we're thinking the world's gonna end. I'm physically up on our, in front of our big, beautiful, nice tv. And of course I had all the tech behind it, right? So this is probably like, you know, maybe a $2,000 TV, but it probably has $5,000 worth of equipment behind it. I can control the space shuttle from this tv. I have got it. I'm up over it, right on a ladder and on the piece of furniture. And I've got all of it peeled out like a nest of wires. You would think it's like a rat's nest of wires. I unplug everything from the house, from the tv and I'm like peeling this. I'm like, I'm yelling for Anders, my 15 year old. I'm like, julie, get in here. And then I'm like, I'm yanking this TV out of the room. And she's like, why are you doing this now? I'm like, honey, if I don't do it now, I will never do it. Like, I just got to a point where I was so clear that this little thing, right innocently. And a lot of people don't have a TV in their bedroom. And you know, I shouldn't have from, from the outset, but I just got into a rut of like watching TV before I go to bed and then, you know, or if it's Netflix or whatever it is. But that one thing has changed everything, right? We probably cut out. I probably cut out eight to 10 hours a week. Now if I watch TV, it's in the living room and I'm watching something like Shark Tank or America's Got Talent that my kids can watch. I don't want them watching the freaking 24 hour, you know. So anyway, it's something like that right now that you could take action on that would have a ripple effect for decades to come. And that little decision for me was like that for my family, dude, I.

Just got to share one more example on that you made me think of. So I, I'm, I'm. I kind of have a more addictive personality, I guess. So. I love video games. However, my. The last video game I purchased was Madden 1999 on PlayStation and I didn't play any video games. Maybe a little bit on my buddy's consoles in college, but very minimal. So I didn't play any video games from 1999 until I became financially free and bought a console in 2020. And then so I own that in 2020. Right now I don't have 21, 22, 23 because I rarely play video games still. But now I have the PlayStation 4. I have a few video games, but that was a necessary ending from 1999 to 2020 of not distracting myself with video games. And I know that's speaking to somebody who's up on those video games two hours a night. Like they're highly addictive and a lot of fun. So that and that was a personal choice. Like, yeah, sure, I'd love to sit around and play video games a couple hours on the weekend and an hour here every. Or a couple hours every night. But, man, that allowed me to stay focused. It allowed me just to. To pursue business at a high level. And I think those are the two most tactical examples we could have given. Get rid of the tv, get it out of the bedroom, cut out the news, and get rid of.

And then the last one, you know, coming off a sabbatical and not going back to it is, oh, yeah, social media. So. So the amount of time you can use. 100. We just did a production mastermind where an agent exclusively uses social media. She's completing her fourth year in the business, and she'll sell a hundred homes this year and is just hiring her first administrator. All from social media. So 100% it has business application. But when you go into social media and you're, like, looking at other people's lives and you're kind of caught up in, like, why was I not invited to that thing? Or, like, why are their kids, like, you know, getting honors in school? Why are they going to Italy and I can't afford it? How does he afford a Lamborghini? It's like, you think that's not happening to you, but it's happening to you. So it's getting you deeper in a hole that you can't dig yourself out of, and it's taking your time, you know? So that's just the other, like, just open. Be open to the internal conversation, you know, around, like, is that something that's standing in my way? Practically from a time perspective, but also from a mindset perspective, like, you know, oh, it's nice that she can get up early and work out. And, you know, it's. It's like, no, you could do that too, but just stop looking at other people doing it and just go do it, you know? So I literally don't think I'll go back to social media. I haven't lost Facebook in forever. My team has logged into my account, but I don't know what they're doing with it. So I have to rely on other people if crazy stuff's going on. Brother, this has been awesome. If you want to just get into our world and, you know, what we stand for is it's just building a business that serves something bigger than just grinding transactions, getting yourself on the trajectory to further freedom, whether it's, well, all the freedoms. Right. AJ has been an awesome conversation, and we'll talk to you guys next week. Be good.

Thanks for listening. Would you please take a minute to share the show with other agents who may be struggling? And if you love the podcast, please leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. And make sure you visit ScaleOrDiebook.com to get a free copy of the My Book. It's a nuts and bolts guide to building a real estate business that gives you true time and money freedom so that you can live your life without regrets. Thanks again and see you on the next episode.